


Garrus Effect: Epiphany

by Neo_Ethereal



Series: Garrus Effect [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen, Science Fiction, The Citadel, Vigilantism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-07-06
Packaged: 2018-07-21 22:46:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7408234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neo_Ethereal/pseuds/Neo_Ethereal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Commander Shepard is presumed dead and the Reaper threat has been swept under the rug by the Council. The galaxy has grown darker and more divided than ever when it should be united by a common cause. One turian decides to take a stand for what is right in the face of impending annihilation. His ultimate destination: Omega.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Garrus Effect: Epiphany

The air in the Presidium was now clean and free of the choking ash and smoke from the Battle of the Citadel, but it would never taste the same again to Garrus. The turian C-Sec officer looked around the beautiful park that the politicians and Council members had to relax in, after another busy day of telling the galactic community what to do. Their latest offense to his sensibility was dismissing the Reapers as a geth hoax. Never mind the wreckage of Sovereign, a sentient machine more than a kilometer long, whose pieces were still being picked up all over the Citadel. Never mind that this one ship almost single-handedly destroyed the Citadel fleet vanguard, easily outclassing any ships the Council, the Alliance, or even the geth can muster.

His mandibles twitched as he walked by a holo, a vid feed from the Citadel newscast. Another pundit, another person who suddenly became an expert on galactic politics overnight, jumped on the- what did humans call it? - bandwagon, that was it. The bandwagon to dismiss Commander Shepard and her "Reaper theory" as a bunch of crazy nonsense.

Melinda Shepard. Her grave on some distant, frozen world in the Terminus was barely cold. Already the rest of the galaxy heaped their fears and misconceptions upon it. The Council, mere months from the time where Shepard laid her life on the line for them and every free soul in the galaxy, are so concerned about losing their power that the Reapers, a machine force from beyond our understanding, are boiled down to being a single experimental geth warship. They deny the truth, that the Reapers destroyed the Protheans, that they created the Mass Relays, and that the Citadel itself is a gigantic trap, meant to ensnare all of us into a grand harvest.

 _How dare I expect them to do the right thing, even if it means losing some of their power?_ Garrus's thoughts seethed as walked past the holo. Even before he met Shepard and went on a journey beyond his wildest imagination, he balked at C-Sec and the Council, at their rules, their politicking and their endless schemes for power under the guise of preserving galactic stability. They were an extension of his father, rules and policies first, but at least he still had a moral code. The Council, on the other hand...

The door to his office swished open. Garrus normally kept it in meticulous shape, but he never cleaned it up after the Battle of the Citadel. He left the clutter of data pads, mods, picture frames and small little trophies where they lay when Sovereign nearly shook the station apart. He didn't want to go back to pretending that everything was okay. He was tired of making minor arrests for petty violations on the Presidium, tired of his cushy new position that he knew he'd been given by Pallin in the hopes that Garrus would shut up about Shepard. But Garrus never did.

The turian ran his fingers across one picture frame still standing on his desk. A member of the _Normandy_ crew took it. Garrus, Shepard and Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko stood in front of an M-35 Mako in _Normandy's_ cargo hold. Each of them posed for the camera with their weapon of choice, all still high from their victory over Sovereign, in that all too brief period of time where they were all still heroes. His mandibles clenched tightly as he thought of what the Council had done to her, this hero, the first human Spectre. He kicked himself for not staying on the _Normandy_ , to go down fighting with her and his only true friends in the galaxy. She encouraged him to "do the right thing" and rejoin C-Sec, to make a difference in the galaxy. She told him once that even with the Reapers still out there, criminals won't stop preying upon the innocent.

Now here he was, fresh from the scene of a crashed transport ship down in Taysari Ward, a ship carrying eezo from Omega. Tainted eezo, that had just contaminated a ward full of innocents, people still trying to rebuild their lives in the wrecked city. He hadn't been called in, but he would be damned if he wasn't going to help any way he could. Then that message from Pallin came in, reminding him that Garrus's current assignment was busting a volus suspected of insider trading with the Serrice Council. That was it. The final straw.

He looked up at the M-92 Mantis mounted on the wall, one of his favorite weapons. It hadn't seen any real use since he'd left the _Normandy_. Since the last time he'd made any difference in this damn galaxy. He grabbed the rifle, relishing in its weight. It hadn't yet been converted to take the new thermal clips, something that in just a few months made it something of a relic. Garrus felt like he had already become something of a relic, a stubborn reminder of what everyone else here was so quick to forget: the Reapers were still out there. _What can I do against a bunch of ancient machines who can wipe out all of galactic civilization?_ His doubt was dismissed when he remembered the promise he made to Shepard, that he'd still be there to protect the good people of this galaxy.

"And that's just what I'll do," he said to himself, out loud this time. "Even if we all go down in the end, at least I can give someone out there some kind of hope, that the scum of the galaxy aren't free to prey on the weak. That we can fight back." He folded his weapon up and put it on his back. He called up his omni-tool, and the drafted messages he'd saved on it. There were five different versions of resignation letters he had ready for Executor Pallin, one of which also mentioned where Ambassador Udina could stick a certain human appendage. He decided instead to simply say, "I am finished with your lies. I am through with playing your games. I am leaving C-Sec for good, so that I can finally do my job without you and your politics getting in my way."

He sent the message. He checked his accounts. Credits were in shorter supply than he'd prefer, but he had enough to buy a ride off the station. He didn't know where he was going to end up, but he knew for sure that he was done with the Citadel for good.

**Author's Note:**

> This series takes place after Mass Effect 1 and leads directly into Mass Effect 2. As I have not read all of Mass Effect: Homeworlds nor do I care to, some events here may contradict what is shown of Garrus's vigilante life in any comics. As far as my own opinion of Mass Effect canon goes, anything written after Drew Karpyshn's departure from Bioware is apocryphal. 
> 
> I am writing these mostly as separate works because they jump around to only specific points of Garrus's life. It's in chronological order but is not necessarily intended to read like a continuously flowing story the way a novel would. I will, however, break longer works up into chapters for easier reading and to occasionally build suspense.


End file.
